The 50-pound, 2-foot-tall Rocket Mortgage Classic trophy isn’t your average golf memento. The PGA Tour sure has some interesting hardware in its roster, the leaping stag of the John Deere Classic, the rooster of the Sanderson Farms Championship, and the Torrey Pine of the Farmers Insurance Championship, just to name a few. And to make a place among those wasn’t an easy task. 

So, when the Rocket Mortgage Classic was announced in 2019, the main concern was to design hardware that a) stands out among the crowd and b) reflects its roots in Detroit. Here is how they achieved that:

You might have missed these details in the Rocket Mortgage Classic trophy

Brian DuBois had his job cut out when Rossetti reached out to him in 2019. The goal was to make a trophy that goes with Rocket Mortgage’s brand image. It was a complex procedure to tie a red ring logo to a golf tournament. But picking DuBois had its perks. The Mercy School of Design graduate has worked with Rocket Mortgage, then known as Quicken Loans. 

He had built custom furniture for the brand. Moreover, Detroit is a city whose architecture is familiar to him. Some of them bear his signature touch as well, like the organic doughnut shop, Dilla’s Delights, and the Detroit bike racks, per Tony Paul of the Detroit News. Nevertheless, the silverware for the $9.2 million purse tournament needed some special touch. 

The red ring of the Rocket Mortgage serves as the golf ball, so to speak, on a tee made of aluminum. Combined with the polished steel base, the 2-foot hardware is emblematic of everything that Detroit stands for. And DuBois was mighty proud of the effort that took him around a month to finish. 

The creator talked about the creation 

Among his multifaceted portfolio, the Rocket Mortgage Classic trophy stands as the most prized possession for DuBois. “This is like a whole different realm for me. When someone wins it, I can say, ‘Oh, yeah, I made that,” the Detroit News quoted DuBois as saying. 

The initial design was a tad bit different, however. The Cranbrook alum made some tweaks to the design given by Rossetti. But overall, it was a smooth process without too many hiccups—a process Rocket Mortgage wanted to document on film. 

Brian DuBois runs a firm, curiously named, 2:37am Studios, that lists Quicken Loans (Rocket Mortgage), Bedrock, and Pophouse as its partial clients. “It’s a bigger ‘Ahhhh’ moment for me,” the 48-year-old said at that time. Well, the trophy has touched the hands of Bryson DeChambeau, Rickie Fowler, Tony Finau, and others. Who will lift it this Sunday?